Populate JSON List To C# Object

Question

I'm trying to populate a JSON/XML string into C# object. I convert my XML to JSON and then use JSON.NET. Example:

JSON string

{  
"persons":[  
  {  
     "age":30,
     "name":"david",
     "hobbies":[  
        {  
           "name":"tennis",
           "hours":5
        },
        {  
           "name":"football",
           "hours":10
        }
     ]
  },
  {  
     "name":"adam",
     "age":23,
     "hobbies":[]
  }
]
}

C# Classes

public class Hobbies
{
    public string name;
    public int hours;
}

class Person
{
    public string name;
    public int age;
    public List<Hobbies> hoobies = new List<Hobbies>();
}

I'm trying to populate the data into a list of persons:

List<Person> persons = new List<Person>();
JsonConvert.PopulateObject(myJsonText, persons);

and I'm getting this exception:

Cannot populate JSON object onto type

How can I do that?

Sachin · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-19 12:54:49Z

Here is JSON representation of an Object:

{
  "key":"value"
}

and here is the representation of a collection/array/list of an Object

[
    {
      "key":"value"
    },
    {
      "key2":"value2"
    }
]

So your JSON string doesn't representing the array or collection of the Person class. It's representing the object with Persons property which is a collection of Person object.

To parse it to the List<Person>, remove the outermost { } and then try.

Your JSON should look like this

[
    {
        "age": 30,
        "name": "david",
        "hobbies": [
            {
                "name": "tennis",
                "hours": 5
            },
            {
                "name": "football",
                "hours": 10
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "name": "adam",
        "age": 23,
        "hobbies": []
    }
]

and then deserialize it like this

var result = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<Person>>(json);

Eser · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-19 12:55:22Z

2

You need a root object

public class Root
{
    public List<Person> Persons {set;get;}
}

Now you can deserialize

var yourObj = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Root>(json);

answered Aug 19, 2015 at 12:55

Eser

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